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So I can't have the house heated all day and night long just for the 3D printer, esp as this is an older house and most of the heat bleeds through the walls. So in a bid to help my printer I'm wondering about building or buying an enclosure for it so that I can have it maintain a nice 20 degree temperature for printing. With the right insulation it might also help cut down on the noise as well.

A bit of googling is proving difficult because many of those building and selling such enclosures are based on the other kind of 3D printers which print with reels of material, rather than a resin printer which isn't actually heating itself up save for the waste heat from the lights, which is already fanned away somewhat to try and reduce heat to the lcd screen. So the printer itself isn't really going to do much of the heating. Though the bonus of these is that at least they are made to insulate so should keep the running costs down and preserve as much heat within themselves as possible.
That said most appear to be mostly a fabric design so aren't made to have supports/built in spots to put a heater so it would need some kind of base and bracket built

Equally looking at cheap/small heaters there's quite a few, but whilst many have built in thermostats they are aimed at heating rooms and hallways, so I wonder how accurate their thermostats are and how reliable they'd be heating a much smaller enclosed space. I wonder if those cheap room heaters would end up either under or over heating because of the area being so small and insulated; whilst a higher value product might prove more efficient and reliable.



The other option to a premade modified is to make something out of plywood, insulate it with something (I've honestly no idea); set down a carpet base (reduce sound transfer to the wood otherwise it will make it louder) and then fit the heater inside. A simple bracket to hold a power pack to which the heater and printer can be plugged directly into.




So has anyone tried this and had any success, if so what did you use and what are your thoughts?

You could probably modify the ubiquitous Lack design. You get some that can allow the upper part to be lifted off easily. Rather than the standard perspex windows, you could probably fill the gaps with high performance PIR or phenolic construction insulation foam and anti-draught squidgy strips.

That might be enough to keep the self generated heat in to keep it at 20-ish.

I have been running mine in a room in low single figures over the winter and haven't had any real problems though.

Space heaters.

Even though the heat generated by resin printers are relatively low, trapping heat without proper control is never a good idea.

Best-worst case scenario is overheated/burned out electrical components, with worst-worst case scenario being fire.

With the space heater, you can provide the printer optimal ambient temperature while still letting your machine exhaust its heat as designed.

How cold is your place? I find 15-ish Celsius is still fine to print if you heat up the resin first in a pot of hot water to start it up. The vat should actually stay warm from the chemical reaction.

Y use a hairdryer to heat up the vat and the resin therein, works well enough, and as lord_blackfang says above, afterwards the UV light and the chem reaction usually is enough to keep the temperature.